Lecture Notes
- What is culture? It is a complex term with 3 uses.
1. Intellectual development of society, growing, gaining culture, such as with philosophy, art, ballet, opera etc.
2. To describe a way of living. A certain attitude and set of values. There are sub-cultures within. There are global cultures, and elitist cultures, etc.
3. To describe important artworks or pieces of literature. 'Canonic' - becomes culture. Examples are Shakespeare and Beethoven. But who should decide what is culture?
- Materialistic reading of culture from Marx:
Culture is part of a superstructure that emerges from the economic relationship of society. Culture emerges from the base
- 'Popular' culture has a different meaning to culture. What is popular culture?
* It is quantitively measured, it is liked by lots of people (e.g. Doctor Who)
* It is a somehow inferior form of real culture. Works aspire to be important. Involves someone making a value judgement - making a subjective judgement based on their world view
* It aims to be understood by everyone. There is an elitist view of work that isn't understandable is worth more than popular work
* Culture that is made by the people for the people, so it is organic. (e.g. brass bands symbolises mining communities backgrounds)
- The side you agree with with depend on your political standing
- Popular newspapers, cinema and entertainment v.s. arty, quality culture... Inferior v.s. elite
- This is an exhibition full of things that the art and design world wouldn't consider to be art. We find these things funny because we think we can do better. We are coded to think that certain things are art and certain things aren't. There is an aesthetic coding. Should we be able to judge the working class attempting to make art?
- Popular culture enters into the spheres of high culture. Graffiti started out as a sub-cultural art, which is translated into mainstream western culture. (E.g. Banksy) Pieces of wall that Banksy has graffitied have been bought and sold, and are now owned by a gallery rather than them being for the community.
- Prior to modernity, society had common culture, with a tiny strata of elite culture. This changed with industrialisation and urbanisation. The working class were put together in a mass in factories, but separated from those that own the factories, the Bourgeoise. Physical distinction between rich and poor starts to create a cultural separation. There is an emergence of the working class culture. Before this only the ruling class were in charge. Also talking about politics.
- Cultural studies start to emerge. In Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, he defines what culture is, that it is perfection, and the best that has been thought and said. He thinks culture shouldn't have an agenda, as then it will be biased. The pursuit of these things is anarchy. 'Culture polices the raw and uncultivated masses.' There is a definite class division.
- The upper class culture starts to be threatened by the working class culture. Theorists (taste makers) attempt to legitimise the culture of the ruling class.
- Leavism thinks that we are gradually dumbing down culture, which was originally perfect in feudal society. He thinks culture needs defending from the rise of popular culture, as this is the collapse of authority. Working class people have ruined perfect culture.
- Popular culture is an addictive distraction and compensation.
- The form of snobbery against popular culture is still existent today, with people being against popular programmes such as X Factor.
- Popular culture has an agenda to show working class culture, but elite culture also has an agenda to stick up for its threatened culture.
- Frankfurt School of critical theory (a Marxist school studying popular culture) thinks that mass culture is bad because it makes everyone obedient. When the school moved to New York, it was an even more developed society, so was the perfect place for people analysing capitalism to be.
- 'The culture industry' - culture is produced almost like in a factory
- 'All mass culture is identical' - for example, with films, you often know how they are going to end from the beginning. In a peculiar way we start to want these things.
- This is culture that is produced for the masses. Movies and radio no longer need to be art. Art has been turned into a business, with everything standardised and mass produced.
- As we consume this we start to get one-dimensional views of the world, which reduce the capacity for free, independent thought. We are bound to this system with false consciousness. It is an ideology. We are thinking about the world in one way.
- Hollyoaks 'babes' teaches you to be sexual object to be successful. Che Guevara's face on t-shirts is not revolutionary anymore. Big Brother and X factor provide a solution for the working class, that this is the way you can succeed, with the middle class judging you.
- We start to identify ourselves by the culture we consume.
- Frankfurt school attacked all forms of mass culture: music, movies, radio...
- All popular music is standardised, with the same beats and same instruments used.
- Keeps you in your social position the less you think about the world
- In thinking/dreaming about something you are doing nothing to actually change it, you are being counter-revolutionary
- Behind the slaughtering of mass culture, there is a 'real' culture that is being lost. An independent, individual culture created by ourselves.
- Society allows us to see copies of the Mona Lisa everywhere, where you used to have to go to the Lourve to see it. Technology now allows us to have our own copy of the Mona Lisa. High culture turns into low culture as the mystical aura behind the painting starts to go.
- Adorno thought that as art is reproduced it becomes rubbish
- Benjamin thought that we have the possibility to define our own meaning from it
- The Birmingham school thought of working class culture as looking at something as radical and new. Young people try to develop cultures that are challenges to the mainstream culture. (E.g. mod culture wanted to other throw the system. But what eventually happens is that they create new industries and that symbolism is lost.)
